David Lewis Phares

David Lewis Phares was a prominent physician, educator, scientist, minister, and writer. The son of William Phares and Elizabeth Starnes Phares, he was born on 14 January 1817 in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, near the Mississippi state line, and was the youngest child in a large family.

Early on, Phares displayed a passion for intellectual pursuits. By age thirteen he had mastered surveying skills, even inventing a sextant with which accurate angles and measurements could be made. In his teens he began an intense study of solar phenomena, investigating solar spots and eclipses, a pursuit that left him temporarily blind. In 1832 he entered the preparatory department of Louisiana College (later Centenary College) in Jackson, Louisiana, and graduated in 1837 with what was said to be the first bachelor of arts degree ever conferred in the state. In 1836 he married Mary Armstrong Nesmith of Amite County, and the couple went on to rear eight children. Phares also befriended Louisiana College’s president, James Shannon, who became Phares’s mentor. Both Phares and his mentor, Louisiana College president James Shannon, became followers of the evangelist Alexander Campbell, a founder of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and a leader of the restoration movement. Phares became an influential “Campbellite” minister, organizing churches near his home in Wilkinson County.

Phares declined a faculty position at Louisiana College and other offers to teach and instead pursued a career as a physician, enrolling at the Medical College of Louisiana in New Orleans (now Tulane University). He graduated in 1839 and began practicing medicine in Whitestown (also Whitesville), later known as Newtonia, nine miles southeast of Woodville in Wilkinson County. He practiced there for more than four decades. He also purchased and managed a twelve-hundred-acre plantation.

Despite the burdens of his medical practice, his passion for education was undiminished. In the 1840s Phares became an outspoken proponent of a common school system for Mississippi. During the administration of Gov. A. G. Brown, his proposals influenced the legislature to create a common school system in 1846. Near his home in southern Wilkinson County, he established at his own expense the Newton Female Institute in 1842 and its male counterpart, Newton College, ten years later, serving as its president until 1859. The institutions prospered until the outbreak of the Civil War but closed permanently by 1865.

Although he did not serve in the Confederate Army, Phares cared for many injured and ill soldiers, and his house served as a home for soldiers during their treatment and recovery. During the war, when he could not obtain medications, Phares explored the medicinal properties of local plants and used them in place of traditional drugs. After the war, he published articles detailing new therapeutic indications for native plants such as viburnum prunifolium, gelsemium, and ceanthus. Phares’s health had been delicate since his teens, and in 1863 he was thrown from a buggy and sustained painful injuries from which he never fully recovered. In September 1868 he suffered a serious illness, and in 1872–73 his vision again became impaired, leaving him temporarily unable to read or write. By 1875 much of his active medical practice had diminished.

Despite his feeble health and his wife’s death on 13 December 1876, Phares continued to address medical, political, and educational issues he considered critical for the welfare of the state. In 1877 Gov. John M. Stone appointed him to serve on the first Mississippi State Board of Health. For that body’s first annual report, he prepared at the board’s request a “Synopsis of Medical Flora in Mississippi,” which detailed more than seven hundred medicinal plants and their therapeutic uses. He also helped the board formulate the state’s response to epidemics of yellow fever and smallpox. He served as the Mississippi State Medical Association’s vice president in 1880–81 and as its president in 1884–85.

As a leader of the Grange, a prominent farm organization, Phares advocated the establishment of an agricultural and mechanical college. After the legislature approved the creation of the college in 1878, Gov. Stone appointed Phares to the institution’s original board of trustees. When the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Mississippi opened in Starkville in 1880, he was appointed to the faculty as chair of horticulture, botany, and animal and vegetable physiology and served as college physician. During the first year of his professorship, he completed a book on one of his favorite subjects, The Farmer’s Book of Grasses and Other Forage Plants, for the Southern United States (1881), which is considered the first publication by a member of the A&M faculty. In 1887 he published Japan Clover, Lespedeza Striata, the Best of all Pasturage and Hay Grasses. Engaging in voluminous correspondence with farmers, he became widely known, writing columns and articles in various medical, agricultural, and veterinary publications.

In 1881 Phares married Laura Blanche Duquercron of Starkville. He retired in 1889 and moved to Madison Station, north of Jackson. He died on 19 September 1892 after suffering a series of strokes.

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David Phares was one of the first department heads at Mississippi State University. A noted scholar, he wrote several articles and books on medicine and agriculture. Phares was also a leading figure in the Grange movement.

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=24812910

https://books.google.com/books?id=Avo7AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA253&lpg=PA253&d...

MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIVERSITY - FACULTY, FORMER- Dr. David Lewis Phares

DR. DAVID LEWIS PHARES, A "FOUNDING FATHER"

The first head of the Biology Department at the Agricultural and Mechanical College (1880-1889) was David Lewis Phares. As part of his work, he lectured on Geology, Botany, Zoology, Anatomy, Physiology, and Veterinary Science. He was also the college physician for a time.

Along with these campus activities, Dr. Phares made speeches and traveled for the Grange, a farmer's organization which for years had worked toward the establishment of the college. Simultaneously, he wrote for professional journals and newspapers, sometimes contributing as many as twenty articles to one issue of THE SOUTHERN LIVESTOCK JOURNAL (published in Starkville).

His more substantial publications consisted of A SYNOPSIS OF MEDICAL FLORA OF MISSISSIPPI (1878), THE FARMER'S BOOK OF GRASSES (1881), and JAPAN CLOVER (1891). The SYNOPSIS was prepared at the request of the Mississippi State Board of Health and was published in that agency's Annual Report for 1878.

Dr. Phares was an M. D., having obtained the degree in 1839 from Louisiana Medical College (now Louisiana State University.) [Should be Tulane University, New Orleans.] He practiced medicine in Wilkinson County, Mississippi, for forty years, and at the same time, managed a farm of 1,200 acres, using the most recent methods and methods and improved machinery, far in advance of other farmers. At his own expense, he established a school for young women which he maintained for twenty years. The hardships of the Civil War forced its closure.

A display in the Union indicated the many and various aspects of Dr. Phares's life. These source materials, loaned by one of his descendants, Mrs. Pat Leake of Woodville, have been recorded on microfilm by the Mitchell Memorial Library, and are available at the library for research on Dr. Phares and the early university years. JACKSON DAILY NEWS, Thursday, April 27, 1967. "REMEMBERING DR. PHARES - >From left, George Lewis, director of Mitchell Memorial Library at Mississippi State university, presents a volume by Dr. David Lewis Phares, first head of the Department of Biology at what is now Mississippi State, to MSU President William L. Giles, Dr. John K. Bettersworth, MSU academic vice - president and noted Mississippi historian, looks on. Phares played a role in the beginnings of Mississippi State during the mid-19th Century. (MSU Photo by J. D. Luther)

[A family member may have written this brief history of David L Phares-could have been Ella Kathrine Phares.]

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Following found on http://www.therestorationmovement.com/_states/mississippi/phares.htm Biographical Sketch On The Life Of D.L. Phares

D.L. Phares grew up in Wilkingson County, Mississippi. In 1830 he attended Louisiana College and came under the influence of then president, James Shannon. He became a Christian, following the order of New Testament pattern. He further educated himself in the field of medicine, and was a practicing physician. In the course of his lifetime he established two Christian Schools, one for girls and one for boys, one of which was called Newtonia College. He was an educator, especially in the field of the sciences. He was considered one of the foremost experts in the field of Botany in the south. He served as a professor for a time at Mississippi Agriculture and Mechanical College in the early 1880s teaching courses in geology. He also taught zoology, anatomy, physiology, and veterinary medicine. For years he served as head of the Department of Biology, Geology and Moral Sciences at A&M. He was a prolific writer. He wrote books on the studies of plants, and his findings in medical use are still recognized world-wide among herbologists to this day. He was a capable gospel preacher. He evangelized in Mississippi and Louisiana. He was widely known and respected among the Christian churches in his area. He baptized many. He wrote for many religious papers reporting on the extensive work in Mississippi among Christians. Phares died in 1892 and is buried in the Montgomery Cemetery in Madison, Mississippi.

David Lewis Phares

Dr. D.L. Phares (1817-1892) was a scientist, educator, author, and a founder of colleges. He graduated from the Louisiana State College in 1837, and took the first A.B. degree ever issued in the state of Louisiana. He was at one time state health officer, and member of the state medical board, and for nine years Professor of Biology in the Mississippi A&M College.

At the request of the Legislature he prepared a report on seven hundred medical plants grown in Mississippi, with scientific names, relations, and therapeutical uses. Many of these plants were new to the profession. The fields of his education were extensive, and he wrote valuable papers on medicine, natural history, veterinary science, improved farming, education and religion.

Among his best known works are Farmers Book of Grasses and Synopsis of Medical Flora of Mississippi. A sketch, in manuscript, of Dr. Phares, may be found in the Archives of the Mississippi Historical Society. A portrait of Dr. Phares is in the A&M Library.

-Mississippi Historical Society, Papers Of Prominent Men p.253,254

Directions To The Grave Of D.L. Phares

D.L. Phares is buried in the Montgomery Cemetery in Madison, Mississippi. Just north of Jackson on I-55, take exit 108, and head east. This is Main Street. Go nearly one mile and turn left on Locust Lane. Go about 3/4 mile, and the cemetery is on the left. As you enter the cemetery the grave is located toward the front, and south end. It is darkened from the weather and the effects of time.

GPS Coordinates Acc. to 24' 32.476472, -90.126257 Grave Marker Faces East Montgomery Cemetery

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1850 Slave Schedule showed that he owned 42 slaves in Wilkinson County.